Last year the Literary Aperitif of CinemAmbiente was introduced to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Festival. It was especially appreciated by the public and so it will be featured again at the 2008 edition. This year the topics will be more numerous, stimulating and up-to-the-minute. The basic aim of this initiative is to contribute to critical, developed and reliable information about the environment drawn from a wealth of environmental literature. A selection is made of the most illuminating books on current-day issues and problems. The five talks by the authors of this edition – again being held in the evocative setting of the Circolo dei Lettori and always followed by a pleasant apéritif – touch on a wide range of subjects which offer food for thought and will surely stimulate discussion. There will be a presentation of the distinguished book by Michela Pasquali on ‘Guerrilla Gardens’, or urban gardens, the ‘other’ greenery born of the grassroots desire of citizens to redesign their city and fill the gaps left by institutions. We learn about the investigative reports of Paolo Rabitti on the hoary problem of waste removal in Campania: his technical reports constituted the fulcrum for the District Attorney's office of Naples in the current lawsuits in progress in that Region. Then we will hear from Leo Hickman, journalist of the “Guardian” and known in Italy for his column ‘Ethical Living’ in “Internazionale” which talks about intelligent tourism. He will show the results of a survey he conducted at the most popular tourist resorts of the planet and reveal the hidden implications, environmental and others, of these types of trips. Then there will be the talk on environment and health by world-famous epidemiologist Dr. Devra Devis, Director of the Environmental Oncology Center at the University of Pittsburgh. She will give us a national preview of a dossier-book that traces the secret history of cancer research, revealing the misdeeds and economic interests that removed our attention from the primary causes of tumors for the sake of profit. The Aperitivi series ends with a fascinating subject which has not yet taken root in Italy. Using the theoretical assumptions of the interpretative method known in the United States as ‘eco-criticism’, Serenella Iovino analyzes literature as a means for ‘educating us to see’ the ecological tensions of the present day. The philosopher aims her gaze at literature as a strategy for survival against the challenges posed by the ecological crisis and the connections between the human world and the nonhuman natural world: between nature, ethics and society.
 Five topics packed with content, solidly rooted in the present and aimed at a critical re-elaboration of the past to serve the future. This is the spirit in which these books have been added to complete and crown the broad-ranging series of films offered by the Festival by their contributing to systematized non-sensationalist communication about the environment so we can form an ecologist consciousness and start a virtuous cycle so sorely needed.

                                    Paola Della Valle

 

Friday 17th  October, 18pm
Michela Pasquali presents